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COASTAL Act Requirements forTropical Cyclone Post-Storm

Assessments and Response by NOAA and

Interagency Partners

March 7, 2013

S. Lord (NWS/OST)M. Bilder (NWS/OSPP)

M. Powell (OAR/AOML/HRD)J. Feyen (NOS/OCS/CSDL/MMAP)A.Westhuysen (NWS/NCEP/EMC)

T. Owen (NESDIS/NCDC)

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Overview

• Background

• Implementation Approach

• Data Collection Plan

• Model and Database

• Summary: General Challenges

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BackgroundSummary

• Consumer Option for an Alternative System to Allocate Losses (COASTAL) Act signed 6 July 2012.  – Intended to lower costs to FEMA’s National Flood Insurance

Program– Focus: improve determination of wind vs. water damage in

cases of “indeterminate losses” (or “slab cases”).

• NOAA required to produce – Detailed “post-storm assessments” [analyses]– Named tropical systems impacting U.S. and its territories– Criteria

• Defined surface circulation • Maximum winds of at least 39 miles per hour • Named as Tropical Storm or Hurricane by National Hurricane Center

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BackgroundNOAA Partners

• NOAA Team

– NWS

• Office of Science & Technology (OST, incl. Meteorological Develop Laboratory)

• National Centers of Environmental Prediction (incl. EMC and NHC)

• Office of Hydrological Development (OHD)

• Office of Climate, Weather & Water Services (OCWWS)

• Office of Strategic Planning and Policy

– NOS

• Office of Coast Survey

• Coastal Services Center

• Integrated Ocean Observing System Program

• Policy, Planning & Analysis Division

– OAR

• Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Lab (Hurricane Research Division, HRD)

– NESDIS

• National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)

• National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)

– Also consulting with NOAA OGC and OLIA on legal and congressional matters.

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BackgroundPartnering - OFCM

• Joint Action Group for the COASTAL Act Post-Storm Analysis (JAG/CAPSA, est. Sept. 2012) – Exec Secretary: Mike Bonadonna

– Co-chaired by • NOAA (S. Lord)

• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (A. Niles)

• USGS (R. Mason)

– Taking lead on drafting the data collection plan due to Congress in April 2013.

– NIST, USDA, NASA, and the Digital Hurricane Consortium have also participated in JAG/CAPSA as either members or technical advisors.

• Completed actions– Mandated inventory of available observing systems and requirements (Oct.

2012)

– Identified (through RFI) all Federal, state, private and academic efforts and systems capable of collecting “covered data”, including private data suppliers (Jan. 2013)

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BackgroundOther Partners

• FEMA must develop the COASTAL Formula – A standard recipe to determine and allocate wind

losses and flood losses for claims involving indeterminate losses

– Developed in consultation with NOAA

• NAS will evaluate the formula’s effectiveness

• GAO must audit NOAA’s data collection efforts, including the cost-effectiveness of the approach

• Community-based Subject Matter Experts

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Implementation Approach

• Focus NOAA Deliverables:– With OFCM and Interagency partners, complete and

submit data collection plan (COASTAL Act Capabilities Development Plan or CACDP)

• Draft under ICMSSR review• Due Apr. 2013

– Establish Coastal Wind and Water Event Database (CWWED, Jul. 2013)

– Named Storm Event Model (NSEM, Dec. 2013)– Establish protocol for collecting covered data (Dec.

2013)

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Data Collection Plan (CACDP)

• Contains– Overview of the COASTAL Act implementation

effort– General descriptions of the methodologies behind

data collection, the database, the model and the post-storm assessment process

– Compendium of observing systems and requirements (appendices)

• Details will be presented in NSEM and CWWED

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Named Storm Event Model (NSEM)

• Collection of separate, but interdependent, gridded products – Provide time-dependent analyses of specific meteorological, oceanographic

and hydrodynamic factors contributing to indeterminate losses– Analysis and hindcast gridded products derived from observations

• Products will cover 4 primary risk areas:– Wind and surface pressure (including embedded severe/ convection

events)– Storm Surge/Waves– Precipitation (including impact on Riverine domain)– Riverine Flooding/Runoff

• Input from highest resolution bathymetric and topographic data is essential

• Validating accuracy (90% criterion from COASTAL Act)– Meeting accuracy requirements will be a major challenge– Bootstrapping technique is likely– Considers variability of and verification of analyses produced from

independent sub-samples of total observations and ratios of variability to mean analyzed quantity (e.g. wind speed)

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NSEM Software Candidates• Wind

– H*Wind analysis– Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA)– Hurricane WRF (HWRF)

• Storm Surge/Waves– Advanced Circulation (ADCIRC) model– Nearshore Wave Prediction System (NWPS, Wavewatch III)– SLOSH

• Precipitation– RTMA (NWS/RFC Stage II)– Multiple-Radar Multiple Sensor (MRMS) analysis

• Riverine flooding/runoff– NWS/OHD Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System

(HEC-RAS from USACE)– USACE Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA)

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Comments on NSEM SoftwareDevelopment Strategy –

Major Components• Wind

– None of the existing software candidates is fully capable of meeting Coastal Act requirements

– Accuracy depends on• Observation distribution (coverage and density)• Processing (e.g. height adjustment)• Analysis technique

• Surge/Wave– Include tidal component– Unstructured grid coupling under development– Untested as coupled software package

• Precipitation and Riverine flooding– Less frequent cause of indeterminate loss– Less well developed at this time

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Comments on NSEM Software Development Strategy –

Connecting the Pieces

• System integration and evaluation– Arbitrary domain for each storm (portability)– I/O dependencies (coupling the pieces)– Error propagation (wind surge/wave)– Evaluation and “high bar” for accuracy– Transition from prediction (ops) to post-analysis

• Collaborative development process using– Common observations– Merged software capabilities– Ensemble techniques– Error analysis procedures

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Coastal Wind and Water Event Database (CWWED)

• Mechanism for accessing all required information for assessment of geophysical environment (aka “covered data”) from the NSEM

– Contains• Observations• Gridded analyses and hindcasts• Critical quality control and accuracy information• Assessment (timing and spatial distribution) of geophysical environment for

total storm event– Open repository at different user security levels• Provides mechanism for retrieving post-storm assessment

results for a given location in the NSEM domain.– Applies wind and hydrodynamic engineering concepts to downscale

gridded analyses and hindcasts of lower resolution (~1-3 km) to “parcel” resolution (~100 m)

• Responsible NOAA Offices– NWS, NOS, OAR, NGDC (contents)– NESDIS NCDC (user interface, IT security and user interface,

maintenance including data storage)

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Data Collection Protocol• Data collection protocol must be established by

Dec. 28, 2013.• NOAA hopes to utilize the National Plan for

Disaster Impact Assessments: Weather and Water Data (NPDIA), FCM-P33-2010 to fulfill the protocol requirement.

• NPDIA is an interagency document spearheaded by OFCM in 2010, which provides specific guidance for interagency response to weather and water related disaster impacts.

• The NPDIA may need to be amended slightly to incorporate COASTAL Act-specific activities.

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Summary: General Challenges• Observations

– Surface observation density not high enough to support wind analyses at high accuracy

– Water level observation network also insufficiently dense– Lack of required coverage and accuracy of bathymetric and

topographic data• Software integration

– Transition of existing software, owned by various NOAA LOs, to integrated system adapted for post-analysis

– Continued development and consolidation of current software capabilities

• Response capability– Conducting post-storm assessments within 90 days at high level of

impact detail– Any future requirements (e.g. extra-tropical storms)

• Computational resources– System integration– Testing on historical cases– Continued development

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